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ON THE COMPETITIVENESS OF UNIVERSITY GRADUATES OF THE SPHERE OF STATE AND MUNICIPAL GOVERNANCE
V. A. Lugovsky
M. N. Kokh
The competitiveness component of an individual on the labor market is the professional identity that helps moving towards professional growth and self-actualization. There is a problem of professional self-categorization of university students who are future employees in the field of state and municipal governance.
Key words: competitiveness of an individual, professional competence, professional identity, professional development.
The problem of competitiveness of the individual in Russian society emerged only at the turn of the 20th century, when the centrally planned economy gave place to market relations. This process entailed a change in the habitual mode of life of the population. The market economy, being a system based on private property, freedom of choice, and competition, relies on personal interest, and it is personal interest and personal needs that underlie completion and are the driving force of economic development.
We understand the university graduate’s competitiveness to be his/her ability to provide oneself with guaranteed work in the received specialty at a prestigious organization with the prospect of successful promotion by the time of completing university education. Four positions are identified as the criteria of personal competitiveness: qualification, professional competence; motivation; culture (values and level of development); behavioral characteristics (behavior on the labor market), life orientation (availability of a plan for one’s life and career, identification of life goals and employment goals) [2]. Thus, based on the previously mentioned, the competitiveness of the student on the labor market is a complex, integrative formation, with its major component being the individual’s self-consciousness. The point of application of forces on the part of university teachers is to form the “I-image” of the professional and the professional identity of the personality as an important aspect of self-consciousness necessary for successful functioning of the individual in the profession. Competitiveness will grow as the student becomes conscious of the social significance of his profession, membership of his professional group, and his significance in this profession. Professional identity helps the individual to control his professional development, to make a conscious choice of the line of his professional development, relying on his own and group values (A.P. Ermolaeva, E.V. Egorova, L.B. Schneider, and J. Super). The system of value-based orientations and meanings becomes part of professional identity only at the top levels of phenomenon development, when the individual has his views and ideas, and the image of what he wants in the professional aspect [1].
The complicated political and economic situation in the world, which has generated a number of problems in the Russian economy, and on the financial and consumer markets, requires a sometimes immediate and competent solution on the part of the governing structures of different levels. This primarily refers to
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professional activities of an employee in the sphere of state and municipal governance, and actualizes the process of self-identification of representatives of this professional community. The complexity of the process of self-categorization of an individual in the profession in this case is accounted for by the current scarcity of behavior samples, attitudes, and stereotypes, i.e. finished cognitive structures that would provide the process of professional identification of a state and municipal employee. The complexities of group self-categorization and formation of professional identity as man’s conceptual idea of his profession and himself in the profession entail problems in the formation of the professional’s personal identity.
The declared problem is still more relevant for young people who are just receiving education in the sphere of State and Municipal Governance and who will largely determine the future economic and social order of Russia. They lack both professional and life experience which would alleviate the difficulties of their professional self-identification to some extent.
The subjects of ensuring the student’s competitiveness are: (a) the higher educational institution, specifically the university’s services of assistance and the graduate chair; (b) employing enterprises; (c) the student’s parents: and (d) the student himself [2]. Alongside the student, one of the leading positions in this list is taken by the university. The competency-based approach being implemented today at national universities is designed to raise graduates’ competitiveness both on the domestic and global labor market. The adoption of the third generation standard has obliged higher educational institutions to identify and describe the competencies to be formed in the course of students’ studies of the complex of academic subjects corresponding to the particular training area. The “Passport and Competencies Development Program” is the new document identifying the ways of developing competency, methods and technologies to be used. High attention is paid to the stock of evaluation means (case problems, questions for colloquiums, list of topics for discussion for round tables, portfolios, topics of creative assignments/projects, business role games, tests, etc.). As we see it, the principal purpose of these evaluation means is that the knowledge acquired by the student should become the knowledge-tool enabling the student in the future to complement his personal and professional experience independently developing his professional “I”, to plan the trajectory of his professional and personal growth. The educational environment of a higher educational institution is to help the student to form his value-conceptual constructs; it should provide the experience of interpersonal communications, which would become a means of the individual’s self-identification in the profession, and promote development of the person as a competitive individual on the labor market.
As we noted above, the individual’s competitiveness in the profession is largely determined by the level of development of the individual’s professional identity. Therefore, we have set the task to study the phenomenon of the “personal I” of students who are future employees of state and municipal governance. We used the “Who am I?” test of M. Kuhn and T. McPartland. A total of 67 students participated in the study. These were young men and women age 20-21 studying in the 4th year of the department of State and Municipal Governance of Kuban State Agrarian University. Considering the issue of the validity of the test, the authors emphasize that the “Who am I?” question is a question which is logically
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related to what the individual associates himself with, i.e. the social status or the characteristics which, in his opinion, are associated with him.
As per the testing results, the following principal groups of the students’ characteristics of their “I” were identified in the testees’ answers: role characteristics, characteristics describing the individual’s psychological status, characteristics of the testees’ competence (the testees’ answers showing the presence of a certain ability). A separate group was made up of respondents’ answers pointing at professional identification. Then the average indicator of occurrence of the answers belonging to a certain category was calculated (as a percentage). The following results were obtained: 55% of the respondents’ answers refer to role characteristics (most often the students identified themselves as a daughter, son, wife, student, sister, etc.); 3% of the answers refer to the category of gender characteristics: girl, beauty, feminist; 17% of the respondents’ answers belong to the category of “psychological status”: sensitive, trustful, determined, etc. The remaining part of the answers belong to the category of “competence”: dancer, sportswoman, intellectual, etc. (the answers belonging to this category accounted for almost 24%). It is noteworthy that only 1% of the answers belong to the category of “professional identity”. Out of the entire sampling only 12 students described their “I” in such terms as an executive, future executive, manager, director, or chief, which evidences the low level of the students’ identification of themselves with their professional group.
In our opinion, task-oriented coordinated work is necessary for all subjects of the educational process - teachers, parents, and students themselves - aimed at development of students’ professional identity. It may be expedient to actualize the career guidance work at the university and in the family. The means and methods of education used today are probably insufficient for development of the individual’s self-identification in the profession, which, in its turn, prevents development of the student as a competitive individual on the labor market. It is only one’s consciousness as a representative of a particular profession, in this case “an employee of state and municipal governance” which will provide the individual with the vector for self-education, self-development, and selfactualization in the profession.
References
1. Егорова Е. В. Феномен профессиональной идентичности: психологический анализ / Е. В. Егорова // Вестник Черкасского университета. - 2002. - Вып. 43.
2. Резник С. Д. Основы личной конкурентоспособности: учеб. пособие / Резник С. Д. Сочилова А. А. - М.: Инфра-М, 2009.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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